Text made as jpeg or giff ends up too choppy (Help!)

GM
Posted By
Gregg_Murray
Nov 8, 2003
Views
612
Replies
7
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Closed
I want to make some jpeg images out of text (I’m very new at this!!!). When I insert it onto my page, all the letters are a little rough and not nice and clean like normal.

See my attempts here…
<http://www.radioarchitect.com/index.html>

Please tell me how to make this stop.

Thanks,
Gregory
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KW
Kyle_White
Nov 8, 2003
Hi Gregg!

In a word: resolution

If you’re going to save text as an image, then the original should have lots of pixels and large text. You can then reduce the size of the image to fit your needs using the "Save for Web…" in PE2.

I’ve set up some examples at:

<http://www.pbase.com/kylemw/general_stuff>

As you can see, I didn’t have much success using "Save for Web…" as a GIF image, edges of characters were not clean. I was using GIF in order to save with a transparent background.

Hmmm, going to have to kick this around some more.

HTH
Kyle
EW
Ed_Wurster
Nov 8, 2003
wrote in message…
I want to make some jpeg images out of text (I’m very new at this!!!).
When I insert it onto my page, all the letters are a little rough and not nice and clean like normal.

When you make text, make sure the text is anti-aliased. There is a button that turns this on. It is in the text toolbar, to the right of the font size.

Ed
JF
Jodi_Frye
Nov 8, 2003
Kyle, when saving as jpeg the quality is always better than the gif. My trick is to create a background under my text that is the same as the background on my webpage and then I can save it as jpeg without having the trouble of needing it transparent.
KW
Kyle_White
Nov 8, 2003
Hi Jodi! And Thanks!

I did a little bit more playing about and must agree that a colour matched JPEG is much cleaner. Also, a GIF without a transparent background seems to be cleaner that one with, but the JPEG still wins.
I’d guess that the only real reason to use a GIF would be if you want to animate something small.

Have fun folks!

Kyle
LM
Lou_M
Nov 9, 2003
Whoa there folks. Unless Elements is doing something terribly wrong, GIF should compress much better than JPEG for text. Let me experiment and I’ll post something back.
LM
Lou_M
Nov 9, 2003
OK, check out

<http://homepage.mac.com/dearg/PSElements/TextTest/>

You’ll see that the GIF file compressed smaller than the JPEG file and, if you open them up in Elements and zoom in, the GIF file is a 100% perfect reproduction of the original whereas the JPEG has mosquito noise.

GIF is a lossless compression scheme that works best on a limited number of colors (such as text on a non-complex background). JPEG is a lossy compression scheme that works well on photos and other complex images that don’t need to be 100% accurate.

GIF also offers transparency, whereas JPEG does not. That transparency can work against you, and maybe that’s what you are experiencing. If you use antialiased text and transparency together, make sure you create your antialiased text on the same color background as its final destination, and then remove the background to make it transparent before saving as a GIF. Otherwise you’re defeating the purpose of antialiasing (which is to mix the foreground and background colors, but then you’re switching the background color behind its back).
KW
Kyle_White
Nov 9, 2003
Bingo!

Thanks Lou!

Antialiasing on/off didn’t even occur to me!

Sometimes there’s more twists than Hwy-3A in B.C. to things!! (A road said to be "Crooked enough to break a snakes back.") (What a motorcyclist calls: Twisties!!!)

Kyle

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